Catskills - Sullivan County - Ulster County Real Estate -- Catskill Farms Journal

As originally posted at LinkedIn.

Since 2002, Catskill Farms has been on a 'slow' but steady climb to bigger. We now juggle a balance sheet with 25 properties in inventory, currently being improved. Houses in Kerhonkson, land in Stone Ridge, homes in Saugerties, Milan, Bethel, Narrowsburg, Livingston Manor, and Cochecton. Oh, and I forgot Olivebridge, Eldred and a rental portfolio that spans Eldred, Barryville, New Paltz and now even Valley Forge PA. In the Catskills real estate market, we found niches of business and opportunity throughout.

I don't mention this to boast, since just last week when my 9 year old son somehow bested me in Monopoly leaving me with little but over-mortgaged properties and a trail of debt and I commented that this could actually happen in real life (and he said I could come live his mom, her partner and him if it got too bad). It's an interesting story of step by step business building over nearly 20 years, and the challenges that creates.

I'm a big fan of How I Built This, a podcast that profiles business success stories ranging from Angies List to a snowboard company to yoga wear. All the interesting stories like this profile a process of unlikely forward progress with few attributes more important than old fashioned perseverance, which is different than risk tolerance, intelligence or education - in fact, many times it appears to be the opposite of intelligence, where any smart person would have changed tack long before instead of continuing to sail onward on a hopeless mission in stormy seas. I guess this makes sense that people would rather hear an 'up by your boot straps' rather than 'trust fund kid with unlimited resources turns small profit'.

For me, debt was a real motivator. Now the couple of hundred g's that loomed ominously over my head in the 2004 seems comical in small-time scale, but for my resources and ability at the time, it was proportionally gigantic. For me personally, debt was a motivator because I was the type of person who paid my bills, and it's funny how the credit score, regardless of how much money you have, really is a true weather vane of a person - there are those who pay their bills- however disruptive and inconvenient - , and there are those who find reasons -however credible and valid - who do not.

The thing is, there are few shorter-sighted actions a small business can do than neglect to pay a bill, or a bank, or a loan, or a credit card. The stain is real, its footprint lasts a long time, and its a real measuring stick for future financial asks. And especially for the small bank (Jeff Bank) experience that has fueled and sustained Catskill Farms, every single time I went back to the lending well, the small loan committee at the bank - regardless of their risk aversion- could fall back on the fact that not only did we pay our bills, period, we weren't late, we didn't ask for leniency, we didn't ask for favors - we borrowed, and we paid it back. Sometimes we had to borrow to pay it back. Sometimes we had to do without personally to pay it back. Sometimes we had to reinvent and reposition the business to pay it back. But it always got paid back - and it's a fundamental tenet of our strength as a business - our business decisions have allowed us to pay off our debts, and build those finance and vendor relationships uninterrupted.

(Farmhouse #1, Narrowsburg NY)

10 years ago builders and a lot of others were just beginning to see there was no light at the end of the recession tunnel, that the economy hiccup was much more than a simple case of over-leveraged indigestion.   A lot of print articles and podcasts are doing fun retrospectives, of which I'm a big fan.

Catskill Farms, simply, had a great recession in the Catskills.  One truism became evident - that if you are going to grow a business, if you can find the clients and customers, it's a lot easier during a recession than a building boom.  It may seem counter-intuitive at first, but a deeper dive exposes the truth of it.  It was especially true in the Catskills real estate market.

Recessions lower material and labor prices.  Recessions free up high-quality labor.  Recessions create slack in the supply chain.  Recessions keep your vendors and suppliers fighting to earn and keep your business, since there isn't a new prospect anywhere to be found.

If you are remain busy as the marketplace place slows, you literally get to have your cake and eat it too.  Catskill Farms survived - in fact prospered - for 3 reasons.  1, our bank (Jeff Bank) never left us, and 2, we remained close enough to our clients to hear up close and personal their changing preferences, and 3, our clients were AAA rated credit risks, and 4 (I know, I said 3), they lived in NYC, which was perhaps the only city in America that weathered the recession without real estate price declines and job losses.  The recession was strong enough that anything but this inadvertently perfect business model failed.

I guess there's even another - this wasn't a primary home marketplace driven by necessity.  It was a discretionary market, and with a nod to the disparity of experiences between those with and those with less, the discretionary market for those with discretionary tastes, held up - at least in my little sliver of the ulster and sullivan county real estate experience.

And it really was a little sliver.  A little tiny niche we panned for gold.

Some of our homes sold in 2009, where banks were calling employers the day of closing, just to make sure the buyer still had a job - the epitome of reluctant lending, looking for any reason not to lend..

Farm 10 (just finishing up Farm 52), a 1800 sq ft piece of Sullivan County NY real estate, not far from Barryville NY.

Ranch 1, again, not far from Narrowsburg NY and the Upper Delaware River.  A 960 sq ft beauty, sold to a single woman and her playwright boyfriend (now her husband).

And who can forget 720 sq ft MicroCottage 4.

Some of best relationships were forged during that time as an up and coming builder, when the region's best framers and roofers and sheetrockers found themselves with openings in their schedules for the first time in a decade, and Catskill Farms weaved their way in, provided work, stay organized and paid our bills which kept the motor turning.

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For many years when I was just starting out in this upstate design and construction - before facebook, and then after facebook but before I adopted it as a viable marketing tool - I kept a blog.  http://blog.thecatskillfarms.com/.  It served multiple purposes - tracking our progress, from a business growth perspective, and tracking the ups and downs of that progress.  It was written from me - a journalism major from the University of Pittsburgh, class of '93 or so.  It was written well, but it's goals were less than textbook, and probably lost me as much business as it garnered, with an unvarnished look at our challenges, our successes and our failures.  It was a tool of victory, of defeat, of payback, of venting, of observation. It was interesting because it was interesting, unique, honest, and unfiltered and diluted - the exact opposite of Marketing and PR 101, but seemingly attractive to a wide niche of our potential clients - a breath of realness surrounded by fake posturing and false flash.

But it worked, because that always been our business.  We are unfiltered, contrarian, talented, and don't suffer fools, even if they happen to be clients.  The idea that I've never believed that horseshit about the client always being right is probably one of the reasons we remain a vibrant business - too much codling of people who aren't going to be happy whatever you do is a soul extinguishing, cash flow negative, business priority distraction.

But the lessons still come fast and furious, even after 20 years.  I think it's time to start tracking them again, and creating a dialogue - even if it's one hand clapping - about the tough choices the owner of business has to make, specifically an owner of a business in the Catskills of New York, building 20 homes a year, and dealing with a wide range of personalities in a very high speed environment.

I'm done for the most part with facebook, and look forward to the old-fashioned blog to communicate once again.

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1700 square foot, 3 bedroom, 2 bath Barn House on 5+ acres outside of Saugerties and Woodstock, NY.

The small towns of Ulster County offer beauty, amenities and charm in abundance.  They offer film festivals and live music. The hamlets and towns that anchor the surrounding land we curate and select for our homes make Ulster County real estate some of the best around for fun, food and festivities (or, if you are like us, backyard siestas and hammocks rank right up there).

The Homes of Catskill Farms are engineered to be as energy efficient as a home can be. Enhanced insulation paves the way for superior performance from our high efficiency furnaces and on-demand hot water heaters. Many of our homes now have heat pumps for their heating source, eliminating the need for gas or oil as a fuel source.

Click here to read more about Ulster County Real Estate. Catskill Real Estate at its finest.

Catskill Farms designs, builds and sells homes and Real estate in Sullivan County, real estate in Ulster County and real estate in Dutchess County. The homes of Catskill Farms tend work, look great, are fully warrantied and have a sort of timeless design. Catskills real estate available for purchase has been undoubtedly improved by the 100 homes this premier Catskills Builder has dreamed up and built since 2001.

Catskills realtors love Catskill Farms homes for sale in the Catskills since their buyers tend to be inspired by them after the long slog at looking at homes that don’t meet the buyers’ criteria. When people from the city think of upstate homes, many of them think real estate near Woodstock. With one of the most famous town brands around, searching for homes for sale in Woodstock NY is a perfectly logical place to start a Catskills real estate search. While many families find homes in Woodstock have a lot to offer, they soon find the Catskills are much bigger and much more diverse than that culturally important locale. Wasting weekends looking at uninspiring Catskills architecture can leave a buyer looking for the nearest bridge to jump from. Catskill Farms checks all the Catskill real estate boxes.

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